


Almost There

by Writing_Like_Ill_Die



Series: Recommencer and More [6]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Black Character(s), Gen, Origin Story, Original Character-centric, Period-Typical Racism, Racism, Recommencer Universe, miraculous lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:46:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26845360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writing_Like_Ill_Die/pseuds/Writing_Like_Ill_Die
Summary: InkTober Day 2- WispAshli's father worked hard to give her a comfortable life. Ashli's gonna work even harder to return the favor. From a nowhere town to city of lights, she'll make a name for herself, even if she has to carve it out with her bare hands. All to make sure her Papa knows that his sacrifices weren't in vain.
Series: Recommencer and More [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1895404
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Almost There

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone's favorite Hacker girl's backstory! I've decided to post more Recommencer lore, because I wanna.

Since the day she was born, she was told the same thing: 'Be grateful for what you got.' Her teachers said it, her aunts said it, everyone said it. They didn't really mean that, of course. Ashli had learned from a young age that not many people said what they meant. When she asked for a new toy because hers was broken, or an extra helping of food, and they said that, they didn't actually want her to be grateful. They wanted her to shut up. They didn't want to spend extra expenses on her. They didn't think she knew, but she had ears, and her aunts talked loud to her Papa. She knew she wasn't wanted. An accident between her father and a woman who didn't have the gall to tell him she was pregnant until little Ashli was found on the doorstep. Her aunts said that Ashli wasn't his responsibility. That he didn't need to take care of her. Dump her, they said. Dump 'it', they said more often.

Her Papa didn't. He loved her. He cradled her and fed her and reared her, in-between double shifts. He worked hard to give her what she needed, and what she wanted. Even as she grew into a young girl with too-curly hair, too-dark skin, who held her tongue and was determined not to bother anyone, he wormed the truth out of her. Hours on the internet and eventually reaching out to a coworker, her father learned to braid her fine black hair into cornrows with beads and charms. Triple shifts for months and a winter with a sore back, and Ashli had her very first computer. Her aunts sneered at the gifts she got, at the care she got. They thought she didn't deserve it. They thought their brother should take care of _them,_ not a bastard child. For every sneer, every nasal 'Be grateful for what you got!', her father instead smiled kindly with a face too wrinkled for his age. 

"If you don't like it, change it." He told her. She liked those words better.

As his health deteriorated, Ashli took his care upon herself. She didn't trust her aunts. Didn't trust the way they tried to talk about his will, tried to get power of attorney over him, over her. He didn't trust them either. Ashli was 12 when she legally became a ward of the state. Her father's last gift to her. She was given a stipend of money each month by the bank, from her father's saved expenses. She moved into a home for children with all her gifts carefully tucked within her suitcases. Papa left her with the best life he possibly could. She was financially stable. She was safe from her aunts. She was free to make her own choices.

She didn't like it, though. Her aunts might have told her to be grateful for what she had. But Ashli preferred her father's advice. She didn't like it. So she would change it. She studied hard in public school, and took careful care of her computer. She learned everything she could in school, and even more online, her fingers finding hidden information with the input of a code and a few workarounds. She lied about her age, did work as a programmer. Fixed bugs, rewrote coding, made computers work again. As she grew, her skills expanded, and she continued to change things for herself. Maybe it wasn't totally legal at times. Maybe she was supposed to wait until she was sixteen to earn money because of some child labor law. But she didn't like that. So she changed it.

It wasn't always quite successful. Like a wardrobe of clothes, she changed herself often, finding herself often disliking herself. She straightened her hair, then dyed it. She acted cool, then acted shy. She shed personas like a snake shed skins, leaving behind periods of her life in her eternal hunt for a life she could like forever. 

Then she got caught. She was faced with time in juvie for pirating, of all things. She knew it was because her skin was darker than most. Her Papa might have been white, but she didn't take after him enough to pass as a white girl. Her nose was too big, her hair too curly, her skin too brown. She didn't like this. Not one bit.

So she changed it. Luckily, she'd done anonymous work for the law more times than she could count. In technical terms, she was pretty much a junior detective. And in revealing herself as the one who had gotten so many criminals captured, she changed the course of law. It was at a cost, though. The pale white cops went ruddy red, at realizing a black girl was the one they'd been working with for years. The sneers she'd gotten from her aunts seemed trivial compared to the entire chalk-white law enforcement and the audience of the white-loving Fox News watching her every move with disdain. In saving herself from prison, she'd gotten herself marked as a 'hoodlum.' A punk, a hood rat, whatever the recent euphemism was for the word they really wanted to say.

Things seemed dank and dark, and though she didn't like it, she didn't know if she alone could change it. For once, she was forced to acknowledge that she was not invincible. Far from it. She was barely a teenager, without a family to watch after her, without people to mourn her if she died. She was smart, and she was ambitious. But she was just one girl, in a world that wouldn't bat an eye if she got shot a couple dozen times for nothing but her skin tone.

Then she caught a wisp of hope. Because the judge on her case was the same.

She was a tall woman with curly black hair in a severe bun. She had a big nose and defined lips. And her skin was dark like Ashli's. She'd asked Ashli to stay after the trial.

"Where are your parents?" Judge Carter asked her.

Ashli tried her best not to shake. "My Papa died when I was young, ma'am. I never met my mother."

"Any other relatives?"

"My aunts wanted my papa's money, so he made sure I never ended up in their hands when he was dying." She tried hard to keep her voice steady.

"You're barely a teenager. You're not even thirteen and you've not only tracked down serial killers through their digital trail, but you were almost thrown in the slammer for pirating a superhero movie not even an hour ago." Judge Carter said. It wasn't a question, but a statement of shock and awe. Ashli mumbled a 'yes ma'am' anyway.

Judge Carter sighed. "Hon, you are brilliant. I've seen your work. I have run trials using your evidence. You don't deserve any of this."

Ashli barely held back tears. It was the first time an adult besides her father had ever said that she was brilliant. It was the first time ever that an adult had truly acknowledged what she'd been through. This was the first time that she hadn't been told to be grateful or to take action. Instead, she was simply told that it wasn't right that she was in the situation in the first place. Maybe Ashli still carried her fathers' words close to her heart, but this? She needed to hear this. She'd needed to hear it for years.

"I'm not gonna let people keep stepping on you, Hon. You deserve better. Unfortunately, I can't do anything directly because of my position as judge. But I have a friend who would love to meet you." Carter smiled, and Ashli did her best to smile, too.

The woman was named Colette Desrosiers, and she was French. Ashli wasn't sure what she expected, but she didn't expect a sturdy woman in riding boots and a dark suit to come marching in with all the forms already filled in to take in Ashli. Ashli had never met someone from France. In this tiny nowhere town, you might get white people bragging that they were some fraction French, but no one who'd actually set foot in the country. She had to admit, she was a little nervous. The police couldn't stop Desrosiers in her quest, though. The woman powered through their resistance like a stallion. Ashli Campbell would be serving her sentence in France, as a ward of Ms. Collette Desrosiers, improving her skills as a programmer and coder in the Rosenhart Academy of Arts and Technologies.

Ashli still wasn't sure what to think. It almost felt like all her change had been for nothing. That some white woman had come and rescued her. Then Desrosiers spoke to her for the first time.

She asked her questions, wanted to know about her. Looked at all she had accomplished, all she had changed about her life. Desrosiers wanted to know everything, and Ashli was just too weak, and broke down, revealing all the worries she'd hidden for so long, even the recent ones. Desrosiers told her to her face that she had earned this opportunity to study. She had talent, and she had worked hard to get it, to improve it, to hone it. Desrosiers did not rescue her. She simply unlocked a door that was unfairly locked. The journey to that door had been all Ashli. And through that door, it would still be up to Ashli. Only now, she had guidance.

And through that door, she would find so many wonderful things. She would find a scorned Italian so much like her, find friends who cared for her truly, find superheroes sprinting through her city. She found a girl, small and meek, who reminded Ashli painfully of the hopelessness she felt when she was escaped jail time, but everything still seemed bleak. Judge Carter had helped her then. She had changed Ashli's future, because the good judge didn't like where it was going.

Ashli took Marinette's bleak future into her hands, and she changed it, simply by being herself.

"Let's be best friends, okay?" The black girl smiled happily, holding pale hands in hers.

Marinette smiled, and nodded. "Sure. Let's be best friends."


End file.
